Aptean Notification Enhancement
The Aptean Notification Enhancement app extends Aptean's Food and Beverage modules by automatically sending email notifications from Business Central whenever quality, expiration, inspection, non-conformance or compliance-related alerts are created. Recipients are driven from configurable rules and reusable Distribution Groups, so the right people are informed promptly without any manual intervention.
Key Features
Automated Email Notifications
Receive email notifications when alerts are created or matched in any of the following Aptean modules:
- Status Management — alerts triggered by status changes on tracked records.
- Expiration Management — rule-based notifications when items or lots approach or exceed their expiry dates, routed to the correct team based on alert type, location, item category, and inventory posting group.
- Inspection Status — rule-based notifications when a lot's inspection status changes (e.g. Released, Rejected, On Hold), routed the same way as expiration alerts.
- Non-Conformances — alerts raised when the Responsible person on a Non-Conformance Follow-Up Action changes.
- Compliance Documents — scheduled reminders for company, customer, vendor, item and lot compliance documents that are approaching or past their expiration date.
Expiration warnings vs. inspection status changes: these are two different triggers, both covered by this app. An Expiration Management notification is a warning that an item or lot is approaching or has passed its expiration date — on its own it does not change anything else. A lot's inspection status (for example, moving to Rejected or On Hold) is changed separately by the Inspection Status module, and that change raises its own, independent notification. One does not cause the other.
Expiration Notification Rules
Route expiration alert emails to the right team using the Expiration Notification Rules page:
- Flexible matching — each rule matches by one or more of: alert type, location code, item category code, and inventory posting group. Any filter left blank acts as a wildcard.
- Location priority — when both a blank-location rule and a location-specific rule match the same alert, the location-specific rule wins.
- Multi-location support — where a lot has open inventory in more than one location, each location is evaluated independently. One email is sent per distinct Distribution Group matched; the same group is never emailed twice for the same alert.
- No stock handling — if the lot has no open Item Ledger Entries at send time, the alert is marked as handled and a note is recorded in the Notification Log. No email is sent.
- Fallback recipient — when no rule matches, the fixed Email Receiver configured in Expiration Management Setup is used as a fallback. If no fallback is configured the alert is marked failed.
- Backward compatibility — if no enabled rules are configured, the system continues to send to the fixed Email Receiver exactly as before.
- Notification log — every send attempt (success or failure) is recorded in the shared Notification Log with the rule code, distribution group, location, timestamp and result. The log is visible as a factbox on the Expiration Management Alerts page.
Inspection Notification Rules
Route inspection status change emails to the right team using the Inspection Status Notification Rules page — the same rule-based model as Expiration Notification Rules, applied to a different trigger:
- Flexible matching — each rule matches by one or more of: the new inspection status, location code, item category code, and inventory posting group. Any filter left blank acts as a wildcard.
- Location priority — a location-specific rule wins over a blank-location rule for the same alert, exactly as with expiration rules.
- Fallback recipient — when no rule matches, the fixed Email Receiver configured in Inspection Status Setup is used as a fallback.
- Notification log — every send attempt is recorded in the shared Notification Log, visible as a factbox on the Inspection Status Alerts page.
This routes notifications for a lot's inspection status changing — a separate trigger from an Expiration Management warning about an approaching or passed expiry date. See the callout above for why that distinction matters.
Compliance Notification Rules
Drive compliance document reminders from the Compliance Notification Rules page:
- Per-type rules — one or many rules per compliance record type (Customer, Vendor, Item, Company, Lot No. Information), optionally narrowed to a single source record, document code or purchaser/salesperson.
- Alert window — an Expiration Alert Period (e.g.
1M,30D) controls how far ahead of the expiration date a notification is raised. - Reminder throttling — an optional Reminder Period (e.g.
1W) prevents duplicate emails until the interval has elapsed since the last successful send, tracked per record/rule in the append-only Compliance Notification Tracking log. - Scheduled execution — the Compliance Notification Engine codeunit is designed to run from a Job Queue Entry and fans work out to per-type processors via
TaskSchedulerso a failure in one type does not stop the rest. - Manual send — an Email Compliance Expiry Reminder action on every compliance documents page lets users trigger reminders for the selected record(s) on demand.
- Notification history — a Notification History action opens the full send/error log filtered to the current record.
Distribution Groups
Reusable recipient lists — configured once on the Distribution Groups page — are referenced by Expiration, Inspection and Compliance Notification Rules:
- User recipients — email address is resolved dynamically from User Setup, Contact Email or Authentication Email at send time.
- External recipients — arbitrary validated email addresses for people outside Business Central.
- User Task Group sync — each Distribution Group is mirrored to a User Task Group of the same code for use with Compliance User Task creation.
- Safe delete — groups cannot be deleted while referenced by an active rule.
Optional User Tasks (Compliance Documents only)
Any Compliance Notification Rule can be configured to raise a Business Central User Task in addition to sending the email, assigned to the linked Distribution Group's members. Two cues (on the Quality Control Cue and User Tasks Activities pages) surface the current user's open follow-up count with drill-down.
Status Management and Non-Conformance Notifications
For these alert types the recipient is resolved directly and no rules setup is required:
- Status Management — by default, recipient email is stored on the alert record itself, set by the Aptean Status Management module. Optionally, a Distribution Group can be assigned to a specific status line so a team receives the email instead of a single address.
- Non-Conformance Follow-Up Actions — recipient email is stored on the follow-up action alert record.
Flexible Delivery Options
- Background sending — emails are dispatched silently from a scheduled Job Queue.
- Interactive mode — the email editor opens for review before sending when triggered manually for a single record.
Configurable Email Layouts
Email bodies are rendered from Word-layout reports mapped through the standard Report Selection framework. The dedicated Report Selection - Notification Enhancements page lets you assign a different layout per usage (Status Update, each Expiration Alert variant, Inspection Status, Non-Conformance Follow-Up).
Batch Resend and Retry
The Email Pending Alert Notifications processing-only report scans all alert tables and re-sends anything whose Send Status is not yet Closed, updating each row on success or failure. For expiration alerts, the report uses the full rule-based routing logic. Run it interactively or schedule it in the Job Queue to retry transient email failures automatically.
Manual Send
Every alerts page exposes a manual send action so users can trigger a notification on demand:
| Page | Action |
|---|---|
| Expiration Management Alerts | Send Expiry Notification Mail |
| Status Management Alerts | Send Status Changed Mail |
| Inspection Status Alerts | Send Inspection Status Mail |
| Non-Conformance Follow-Up Action Alerts | Email Follow-Up Action |
| Compliance Documents pages | Email Compliance Expiry Reminder |
Retention Policy
The Compliance Notification Tracking log and the shared Notification Log (covering Expiration, Inspection and Status Management sends) are both registered as Retention Policy allowed tables with a default 3-month period, so append-only history is automatically pruned by the standard Business Central retention job.
Prerequisites
This app requires the following modules to be installed:
- Aptean Status Management for Food and Beverage
- Aptean Expiration Management for Food and Beverage
- Aptean Inspection Status for Food and Beverage
- Aptean Compliance Documents for Food and Beverage
- Aptean Non Conformances for Food and Beverage
- Aptean Quality Control for Food and Beverage (BC)
- Aptean Quality Enhancements (Theta Systems Limited)
- Aptean Integration Layer for Food and Beverage
- Aptean Foundation Layer for Food and Beverage
Getting Started
See the Setup page for full setup instructions for each notification type.
At a high level:
- Turn on Send Email From BC in the setup page for each Aptean module you want to enable.
- Create Distribution Groups and add User and/or External recipients.
- For Expiration Management, create Expiration Notification Rules linking each rule to a Distribution Group. Set a fallback Email Receiver if desired.
- For Inspection Status, create Inspection Notification Rules the same way.
- For Compliance Documents, create Compliance Notification Rules with an Expiration Alert Period, optional Reminder Period, and Distribution Group.
- Optionally schedule the Compliance Notification Engine and the Email Pending Alert Notifications report as Job Queue Entries for unattended execution and automatic retries — Business Central will prompt you to do this automatically if background sending is turned on but no job is scheduled yet.